


Full Circle

by lzskwzl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Anal Sex, Androids, Bottom Will, Confusion, Dramatic Twist, Dry Sex, Dubious Consent, Empath, Fingering, First Time, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, Identity Reveal, M/M, Memory Alteration, Non-Consensual Bondage, Open Ending, Porn With Plot, Possessive Hannibal, Recovered Memories, Repressed Memories, Rough Sex, Teasing, Top Hannibal, Will’s Electric Dog, Winston(Hannibal), a promising one, but not really, he may kill/eat humans may not, sex at first sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24910723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lzskwzl/pseuds/lzskwzl
Summary: After Mercer’s deception, the human race fell into a crisis of faith; and the androids on the off-world colonies initiated a war against slavery. While the earth became a sanctuary for immigration, a large number of stowaways came after those human refugees…The empathetic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. Will had always thought his empathy was defective until he realised it was just a form of self-protection.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> I’m so sorry! I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep recently and, God forbid, I just can’t shed this terrible idea. The canon is a serious work and idk there must be something wrong with me to chose it as a background for something flighty. I’ve also seen the movies but I’m not going to use those settings, otherwise this one-short will be stuffed with lots of tedious information. Besides, we’re in the 21st century, not the 20th, so you may find lots of details have been changed. But still, I own nothing.
> 
> Please see all these tags above! I’m not good at tagging so remind me if there is something omitted.
> 
> By the way, English is not my mother tongue and I just try to write something for the couple in my second language for the ever first time. So pls, I really need someone to hold my hand. It’s more than welcome to correct or point out any mistakes. Of course, all feedback and comments will be appreciated. Hope you can enjoy it!

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_TS_

Project Name: CLR-Memory

﹉

Experimental Subject: Archetypal Reader, Military-Style A0E-Ⅰ1

Long-Term Objectives: Empathy, Mind Reading, Memory Implants

Progress: Suspended

Current Status: Semi-Supervised

Substitute: A0E-Ⅰ2 -- A9E-Ⅸ9

﹉

﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

_10:30 p.m._

_Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore, Maryland_

The deep night sky is as pitch-dark as a piece of opaque flat glass and incised only by the sporadically passing light. Occasionally, private aircraft with searchlight off will fly overhead, like a fleeting shadow or a gloomy spectre, reflecting the ground neon from time to time but the fuselage itself is unobservable. Most of the floating cities and air routes have been abandoned for years due to fallout covering the whole planet in the atmosphere after World War Terminus and the crucial reason why they get refurbishment and decontamination recently is not the pollutant has diminished in potency but the increased population mobility caused by the backflow of people who flee their  _golden land_ because of the continuously intensified war broken out in the off-world colonies one after another. 

The howling wind wrapped in the shades of night passes through the pedestrian bridge and changes its mind in the middle course, starting to whine; it spirals from the high buildings in the sky down all the way into the lower abyss and snorts loudly as it drills through the narrow passage between empty containers on the ground. Lying no more than a few dozen feet away is the Chesapeake Bay, in which the indefatigable tides eternally lapping rocks on the shore, furtively whispering to the wind. And in the dark corner of a pile of empty containers, a silent deal is going on; while on the other side, someone lights an e-cigarette, simulating the flickering of a real butt in the night.

“Hands up.” 

Out of the darkness comes a muffled sound, followed by a cold, hard touch against the back of his head. The man raises both hands obediently, separating his fingers and dropping his cigarette. The light flashes in the blackness and falls to the ground while the end is already extinct without the stimulation of breath. 

Being manoeuvred his way to the other side of the containers, the man shuffles yet with no sign of resistance. The other two look back in his direction and immediately, both of their faces change; one of them immediately draws his laser gun, only to fall backward before he can fire. And the man who stabs him in the back is none other than someone he has just traded with.

Will looks calmly at two of them and quickly makes a judgement of the current situation. The kidnapped andy is the accomplice of the one lying at his feet, and it seems that the man who gets him – no emotions have been detected since he appears – no surprise, provided, is an android too. He knows that the secret stockpiling of weapons through illegal channels does not simply involve a small group of androids, but he has no interest of getting caught up in a gang fight between two warring troops, nor of leaving a live one to help him find the den of revolting androids. That’s for the police and he’s just a bounty hunter, who is paid by the count of heads he has blasted away. 

The andy with the gun in the back of his head is now subdued and dispirited – typical response to inescapable death for an android. But Will doesn’t take him lightly. After all, he will resume his resistance as soon as he gets away from the hazardous situation. Nevertheless, the one behind him deserves to be taken more seriously at the moment. Without the light of the moon or shine of stars, the passage is in complete darkness. Will can’t see the other man clearly despite his superior night vision; so as a precaution, he slowly raises his laser tube and aims at the man in front of him.

“Who are you?” asks the man abruptly. Will, who sees no need to waste his breath telling a doomed man the truth – an android, he rectifies in mind, decides to throw out in a meaningless, offhand way. “And what the hell are you?”

To his surprise, the man seems to take the question seriously, actually, so absorbed in it that he even forgets what he is doing, lowering the gun slowly; while the andy takes the chance quickly and strikes back with his elbow before whipping around and snatching the laser with one hand, grabbing the man’ neck with another and snapping it off vigorously with a crack of the fractured bone piercing the clotted darkness.

The dramatic shift baffles Will in the first few seconds and when his mind catches up, the andy has already taken his bounty away. Will rolls behind a mountain of kipple-ized clutter, narrowly escaping the laser, and waits until the first round has passed before firing back from cover. Though he knows clearly that he has missed his preemptive opportunity to strike, he still crouches recollectedly behind the shelter, waiting for the other man to lose patience first. Of course there’s another possibility that the andy may not try to move forward and just take the opportunity to flee. But anyway, Will holds his breath and clenches the unit in his hand – a metallic sphere which can cancel an an android into catalepsy for five or six seconds; and that’s more than enough for him. 

Listening the approaching footsteps, every muscle fiber tenses in Will. He put the thumb right above the projecting part on the device, poised to attack. The next moment, Will presses the button, squating the left leg before bending the knee; with both hands bracing on the ground and the front sole as the axis, he sweeps his right leg and takes the frozen stiff andy down then gets up. Stepping on the other’s chest, Will grabs the gun from his hand, points it between his eyes, and shoots. The entire routine flows smoothly from one movement to the next and it takes no more than five seconds.

Will glances at the three bodies on the ground and contacts the Recovery Department of Retirement before calling Jack.

*

Given that Wolf Trap is quite a way from Baltimore, Will steps onto an overpass and takes the automatic light rail. Although the number of humans has dwindled in comparison to the population in past, intelligent transportation systems and a kind of autonomous vehicle like this, controlled by central computers, are still running.

There is still a little way to go after walking down the overpass as no infrastructures have been built around his wooden house, from where he can see nothing but a stretch of barren land caused by heavy metal pollution. A scene of desolation is commonplace in modern cities after World War Terminus, but with few legacies of human activities, Wolf Trap shows not the decline of the city, but the sinister natural environment after the war. And his lone hut floats on it like a piece of driftwood in a dark sea of kerosene.

Nearly has he opened the door, Will is greeted by a cloud of shaggy buff hair. The dog is shrugging the coat and wagging the tail in a merry way. Will crouches over and picks him up, putting Winston on the sofa before stroking his fur. To call an electric dog like a real one is self-deceiving and Will can’t find more comfort from caring for it. If it’s any consolation, most other people don’t own a real animal, either. 

Getting increasingly tired, Will is wondering whether it is time to reset such clingy mode as it only stirs him, making him yearn for a real dog even worse. He had real dogs, not an electronic one. In a world of species loss, many animals are extinct or on the verge of extinction and most people are likely to opt for an electronic substitute, for they cannot afford a real one in their lifetime. But somehow, with a vague impression, Will dimly remembers that he has owned more than one dog. And it is the vague idea that keeps pushing him to get a real dog. Having no such amount of credit points, he bought an electric one at first – said to be almost as good as the real one. The same care has to be taken: brushing, feeding, letting out the door for a walk. And yet, Will can’t feel any fulfillment in taking care of the electric dog. He feels like he is only attending to Winston as if it is a piece of utensil. But then again, do humans empathise with objects?

Will’s mind drifts aimlessly. One moment he is skeptical about those vague suspicious memories, another he thinks it was time for him to buy a real dog. Tonight he has just retired two of andys, and unless something unexpected happened, the one not solved by his hand will also be attributed to him. Then three. Three thousand credits.

He fishes his phone out and opens the Sidney’s catalogue, looking for the item of Dog, turning to the page with sheepdog on. The listing is in italics. Four thousand credit points.

Three thousand credits: more than enough to pay the down payment. Will is about to make an appointment to call the animal market when the phone rings suddenly, cutting through the quiet air and stings his eardrums. Seeing the familiar caller ID, Will wonders could it be possible for another assignment to come so soon before answering the phone. 

For the second time tonight, he hears Jack’s voice. But the words are so alien to a man’s ear that Will can hardly get what he means.

“Three retired. One of them is human.”

*

On the drive to the police station, Will’s head is haunted by Jack’s words. “When you killed him, did you know it was a human, Will?” In fact, it isn’t Will who killed him, but Will didn’t make clear to Jack when he called him earlier. Now, even if Will tried to explain, it may sound like a sophistry. 

By the time Will arrives, it is already midnight. Dead silence reigns everywhere and normal people would have gone to sleep. Jack is sitting in the office, under the dreadfully pale light with a face as black as ever, and if anything, his face in the shadow looks darker as he bends over the papers. When he hears Will opens the door before coming in, he looks up and nods to Will to find himself a place to sit. Will doesn’t look for one. He folds his arms across his chest and leans against the wall, waiting for anything harsh or severe. “So, a lapse in professional judgment?”

Will looks at him sternly and says. “Trust it not, I didn’t kill him. Another man – the andy did. ”

“Then tell me. I need an explanation.” Jack presses his hand to the paper on the desk and takes a slow, deep breath, apparently trying not to show his exasperation.

Will recounts the the whole thing in plain words then thinks about how unmoved he has been since hearing the shocking news. Even now, after recalling it again, he can not feel a trace of superfluous emotions.

“Will, are you all right?” hearing something like this, he gives a subconscious answer; “I’m fine.” Actually, nothing is right, but except that, Will doesn’t know what to say exactly, yet really, what can you say when you just stereotypically decide someone is unworthy of sympathy out of professional judgment and witness his death with heartlessness even regard his body as no more than a piece of object waiting to be recycled or kipple-ized? In this respect, Will decides, it seems that  _fine_ is not a correct word either, to think when you have disassociated yourself from someone’s death as casually as to slip and snap back, waving a hand while saying  _I’m fine_ …surely a normal empath would not be so apathetic? Knowing that the dead is a human, Will tries to find a hint of sympathy but fails. In fact, it seems that his empathetic gift has never been applied to compassion. He can’t have mutual feelings while empathising with another being, like an odd teapot which receives poured tea but cannot pour the filtered liquid from the spout or leave anything in its belly. But there must be something left. After all, nothing will just vanish in thin air. Unless he is designed to be that way, as if he were merely a tool to detect empathy, to distinguish humans and androids…

Jack now rambles on the fact that the dead man called Abel Gideon is a schizoid human patient who escaped from BS HCI days ago and though Will insists on his innocence they have to keep the news dark while he must accept supervision from another professional observer who will be inducted tomorrow. Will listens absently during the whole process, only feeling a strange sense of disengagement, as if his soul were floating above the room, watching his abandoned body still working mechanically, opening mouth now and then in response to Jack’s words inanimately.

“In addition, we suspect that some companies in off-world colonies are secretly developing a more advanced new model of androids.” Jack diverts Will’s attention by suddenly changing the subject. Will takes in the words, and frowned. “Any clues?” Jack nods, then adds flatly. “According to the police in Paris. They have captured an android, a type we have no idea about it yet. The normal Voigt-Kampff test doesn’t work on her, so they take an X-ray Scan instead.”

Will wonders why the Voigt-Kampff test, which is automatically carried by a machine with a negligible error rate, would be queried and what makes her so special to subject to repeated identification.

“What on earth did she do?” Will find himself asking.

“Bedelia Du Maurier is a psychiatrist. Just weeks earlier, she brutally murdered her patient by digging her hand deep into his stomach.” Jack talks with a grim voice, his face is livid now. “And judging by her case, they’ve been on earth for years.” He pauses, expression growing more solemn if possible. “From the testimony obtained under hypnosis, we know that the leader of this small group of andys is an androidist who considers human beings to be inferior to them. He’s still trying to find a solution to the fact that there is only four-year lifespan for androids; and French police believe he may have successfully infiltrated Mason’s Association’s Factory as a researcher. I hope you can look into it later."

“Later?”

“Yes, you should adjust yourself now. I don’t think you are stable enough to take it forward.” Jack waves his hand in a clear sign of dismissal.

Distracted by a barrage of news, Will leaves the police station and, instead of going back into Wolf Trap, goes with no idea where to head exactly. He has driven for nearly half an hour on the deserted street in the late night until he stops at a narrow alley beset by kipple gushing from rusted buildings on both sides and, despite the unremarkable appearance, of which the lights coming out catch Will’s eye.

Will walks to a cabin pub at the end of the lane, taking notice of the dim and hazy light filtered through its semicircular window. Most of the entertainment facilities have gone underground nowadays, and those few remaining above ground are usually as miserable as this one. Open the door, dense and pungent odour sprays into his face immediately. The din of the crowd soaked in alcohol and heavy metal music played listlessly in the background are lethargically rapping the eardrums of people.

The neon overhead cast dullish lights, flabby and languid; and the room seems to be wrapped in an invisible coat – a garment woven of hubbub and decadence, which keeps the pervasive aura of seeking after pleasure in a perfect way. The air is moving so slowly, almost frozen, that the numbed crowd fails to notice that the melody, which has been relayed so many times, is still flowing slowly over their heads.

Will sits down at the bar, orders a hard whisky and drinks in silence broken only by a strange phone call. He picks it up and hears a low, smoky voice that merges with the drowsy atmosphere of the bar and is supposed to be reassuring, but instead, the voice sends a small electric current down his spine and sets his nerves jangling. 

Will stiffens in spite of himself; his tone is gruff. “Who are you?”

“I thought Jack had told you. Officially, we should meet tomorrow.” There is no direct explanation, but it’s enough for Will to figure out who he is. “What do you mean  _officially_ ? I suppose there’s no need for us to meet in advance privately?"

“I think it’s necessary for us to meet in the absence of the eyes and ears, for your situation seems worse than your supervisor described.” Hearing the last words, Will huffs, and drinks the left up in one breath before finding that the voice comes from double sources. “It seems that my observation object has a tendency to poison himself with alcohol.”

Will turns around in surprise and hangs up the phone. Seeing the bearer looked familiar to him, but finally doesn’t recognise the man, Will concludes that it’s just a delusion caused by too much alcohol. He waves his hand at the quip. “This amount of alcohol isn’t going to kill me anyway, and wouldn’t it be better for you if I were done, without someone with a murderous bent to kill you one day on the field?”

Hannibal doesn’t take the bite and gives Will a pacific glance, saying calmly, “Like serendipity. The day I received Jack’s invitation in the evening, I found my companion to-be right in front of me late at night, too mean to share a glass with another one, drinking alone, building up fortress in mind, and coldly rejecting any possibility of amity.”

The words spoken in his velvety voice are infused with a kind of magic that penetrates to people’s hearts; like photographic plates, in the elimination of redundantly overloaded colours, fixed in your darkest memory with the eternal pattern as long as the lack presence of lights. And his voice sounds familiar to Will as well; yet no matter how hard he’s tried, he can’t remember where he has heard it. But again, when he lifts his eyes, caught in the glimmer in his pupils, none of that matters; amazed by the rich wine-like color and lustre in those eyes, Will looks the other man raising his glass and motioning to him, suddenly realises that he has just been flirting with himself. What he is more conscious of is that the man’s suit, formal and out of place in this small, noisy bar, more suitable for a premeditated hunt rather than cruising a partner.

“What kind of guy is he if he dressed like this…and said he was just out drinking?” Will pauses for a long, deliberate look up at Hannibal’s suit, eyes keep going along the paisley pattern on his tie to the shaved chin, then his prominently chiselled cheekbones, and finally looking into the maroon, almost purplish-red dark eyes in the dim light. “Perhaps he is finding someone to drink with?”

“For Mercer’s sake, why are you here?” Will puts down his glass, not even taking his eyes off Hannibal. “Were you just flirting with me, doctor?”

“What if I say yes?” Hannibal also keeps his eyes on Will  with great intensity .

“Holy fuck, ” Will stands up abruptly from the bar stool, stumbled over the leg of it, losing his footing but not ending up with the hard floor as expected, instead, he falls into a warm embrace. A smile flickers on Will’s lips as he gets up. He pulls at the other man’s collar and steals a kiss from the corner of his mouth as a quick greeting, saying in a husky voice. “So what are we still doing out here?”

*

The next day when Will wakes up to go to the bathroom and wash, it’s close to noon. He finds that the effects of alcohol are far more serious than the temporary aches and pains of the body in the long run, considering he has to go to work and associate with his colleagues(including the new one). While the decision under the influence of alcohol may be unwise, the consequences of this decision are even more horrible.

Now looking at himself in the mirror: all of these unruly hair sticking out all round in quaint wisps, residual beard needs to be shaved and bloodshot eyes rife with undiluted drowsiness – yet somewhat eclipsed by the violet bruises and reddish-pink marks all over his neck and collarbones, the fact that he has bedded with his prospective colleague strikes him eventually. The thought of going into the police station today to meet the others only makes things worse. Will mutters a curse under breath and swears to change into something that would cover his neck. He has no interest in reminding anyone of his night out at all.

Jack, who has no idea what they had done the night before, makes a formal introduction to both of them. Hannibal narrows his eyes slightly upon seeing Will’s high collar. Will takes in the tiny expression and smiles stealthily, while keeping a Social Distance on the surface.

“Last night another bounty hunter got killed, some organs were missing, more Ripper’s mo.”

Technically, such cases are reserved for the police; and Will has nothing to do with them. But Will has a gift and Jack can’t afford to waste such resources. So he signs a contract with Will, who helps him solve cases, and gets wages from him. The source of income is precarious for a bounty hunter and Will has to work for Jack if he wants to earn a living.

Jack, in turn, who totally missed the undercurrent between two men, walks to the front of the interactive LCD screen before opening the newest file on the desktop. “The victim’s name is Ray Piaget, from DC, coming to Baltimore after an android. The last point of his credit consumption was recorded in a local bar named Ghost Town. After that, he disappeared.” He pauses, then says gravely; “It’s between twelve last night and one o’clock this morning, according to the preliminary forensic tests.”

When Will hears the name of the bar, he remembers it was the same bar he had been to the night before. More coincidentally, this case happened at the same time that he met Hannibal after leaving the police station. He steals a covert glance at Hannibal, who looks thoughtful, seems to be  aware of the coincidence as well .

They head to the scene of the crime in the end, and Jack drives the others away, leaving Will alone to reconstruct the scene while he and Hannibal wait aside.

There’s a pattern to what Ripper  have done . First is that all the dead are bounty hunters. Moreover, everyone’s brain is destroyed. And Will himself has a rummy empathy for the Chesapeake Ripper’s crime scenes, unlike the lack of deep emotional experience with others, every time he gets into the Ripper’s mind, he finds it difficult to separate himself from it, as if their existences merge in his mind and begin to blur. And every time he is at the scene of the Ripper’s crime, strange hallucinations will climb up on their own. 

This time the symptoms seem to be more severe.

Will finds himself standing behind a glass wall and waiting something to appear on the other side. People’s voices sound loud in his mind and they intertwine with one another like distorted electronic noises. The grating screams and the hard-as-iron beats come far away from nowhere, with rhythmic  _tat-too tat-too_ like hoofbeats...

Then the world goes off and the blackout-like darkness falls with a crash.

*

When Will wakes up again, he finds himself lying in what looked like a hospital whose walls are painted with dazzling white.

Seeing he opens his eyes, two men next to him look jubilant at first, then follows the panic, like filaments, entangling and floating in the sky, wounding round his throat and taking his breath away. Then an eerie noise begins to sound in his head. At first it was like a result of electromagnetic distortion, shrill and hard to recognise. Later it becomes clear that it comes from the men beside him.

“We made it!” 

“No, the experiment was unfinished …” 

“There must be something wrong, turn it off!”

Will looks down at the countless catheters and cables connecting his body to the apparatuses around him, and before he can think of anything, he loses consciousness again.

He has awoken fitfully since that, and each time he regains consciousness he will see a different face and hear a strange voice, but there is a man never varied at the other end of the room, outside the transparent glass wall, whose appearance is always accompanied by the sound of gears moving the elevator up, the grating of the metal gate rising and falling, and a series of steady clop-clop resembling footsteps. The man stands outside the wall, staring into the room and keeping unfathomable to Will.

Will is planning to escape.

They set a strict schedule for him while he goes to great lengths to gather various information, knowing that the man standing on the other side of the wall and observing all the activities in the laboratory, who he sees every time he wakes up, is the supervisor of the goddamn experiment, and himself is, unfortunately, the dog-ass subject. The chief has a password card to unlock all the doors in and out of here, but he can get nothing without getting rid of the pervasive surveillance.

Apart from five hours of all kinds of probe and poke by researchers and three hours of general education, in which he receives input in a completely enclosed environment, he has enough  _free time_ under the supervision of an observer, whom he always asks some seeming innocuous questions. “It must be quite a sufficient energy consumption, to supply such a big building.” Will can pick up lots of information from the observer's mind as he says these words. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the man is diligently keeping an observation log, and can't help smiling to himself cynically. How busy the guy is.

There is no need to hear men's words, Will can just read their minds and find out the main passages of the building and the staff rooms, knowing the schedule of the supervisor by putting the pieces together and learning that the power supply of the laboratory is separate from the rest of the building, which shows the temporary power failure of other floors will not cause panic to a certain extent and thus, it gives Will a chance.

After the timed power cut, Will throws the nagging observer into the toilet and slips into the lounge. 

It’s empty, the man who was dozing on the couch when he entered before is nowhere to find. He searches the room again, looking for every corner, but nothing comes out.

Nothing.

Will curses himself for jumping into action too hasty and has not thought of the possibility that the administrator may just wake up from a damned dream and go away for something else on a whim.

Anxiously, he gropes to the door of the cloakroom in the dark, wondering if there is time to free the hapless guy he has knocked out and bound in the toilet; or maybe killing him would be better?

Stuffed with these thoughts in mind, Will doesn’t realise that someone is approaching in the darkness, and by the time he becomes aware of the looming heat behind him, a broad palm already has held tightly against his nose and mouth.

Will freezes when he feels the breath in his ear. The man behind him leans over and whispers, straight into his ear, “It seems that they underestimate you after all.”

Will keeps still; his mind is racing.

“Now, now. What do you want?”

As Will thinks about what he has input today, an idea flashes through his mind. He tries to lick the palm of the other man’s hand and, as expected, it gives a pause before letting go slightly. Will seizes his chance to fight back, breaking his grip with one hand then tearing himself away. Wrenching his body free, he stands a little further away from the man, whose palm was dry, warm and tasteless, but Will can’t help wetting his upper lip with a quick darting tongue tip.

There is no turning back now. He has to get the password card.

The soft snort makes his heart sink; but Will still manages to pull a little further back before he's pinned against the wall, with his collar grabbed by an iron grip. Will tries to struggle, only to find the hands clamping him is as hard as steel. Seeing no other way out, he decides to play the initiative one to stop being so passive.

“Or what do you want?” Will lowers his voice. Two uncaught hands touch the back of the man's waist and hoop them, he pulls the other one closer then presses him to his crotch as one hand comes further down to the waistband, creeping into the joint of his clothes and touching the erector spinae all the way down to his tailbone.

His mind, unlike others, is completely silent. All the provocations are engulfed soundlessly like a smooth and sticky dark lake submerges a piece of stone, leaving barely a ripple. But Will can not convince himself that this is his true mindset.

The backup power for the lounge kicks in quickly, and the emergency lighting, specifically the photon computer behind Will's back, turns on. And the animation on screen keeps changing under pressure, faintly glowing blue in the dark. Will looks up into the man's face, trying to read more clues from his expression, but the other man only peers back with his inscrutable eyes, in which a rich Cabernet Sauvignon like colour begins to settle, vaguely showing a dark purple of clotted blood in the blue light.

No sooner has Will’s other restless hand reached into the man’s front pocket than he is caught without even reaching the edge of the card. “Or you can enlighten me?”

If Will feels any self-consciousness, he doesn’t show it. As if he hasn’t just been the one trying to steal the card, he looks at the man, straight into his eye, a flicker of a smile crosses his lips. “My proposal…” He gives a little pause, moves closer, nudging his crotch deliberately. “Is that clear enough?”

The man gives a noncommittal grunt. Will does not relax his taut nerves, continues to move his free hand defiantly along his waistline, down his spine, lingering over the small area nearly under the second lumbar spine and preparing to strike with the kneecap and hit the weak spot. But before he could react, the man pulls away, and his hand drops away from the deadly acupuncture point. Not that much he can care now, he tries to pull the man roughly back to him, only to be caught again and get another hand folded behind himself, pairing up with the former.

“Since you are so reticent about yourself,” the man says placidly, tied a fast knot around his wrist with the necktie and fastened it before he can wriggle free. “I have to take a little precaution lest you get something you don’t want.” Will is annoyed by the subtle irony in the last words, but he never gets chance to retort as he is pulled up by the other one and pushed into the toilet, face pressed against the countertop of the bathroom vanity with hands tied behind back. 

“Why save that worthless human’s life?” He bends down and whispers in Will’s ear. Will shivers and eventually, realises it: he has been calling others  _humans_ all this time. “No worries though, I’ve saved your trouble.”

“What the heck are you…?” Will croaks, trying to look up at the reflection of the man’s (man?) face in the mirror.

“Something like you. While I may not suggest this in the first place.” And with that, he opens the front of Will’s robe, exposing his shoulders, then the upper torso. For the sake of cleanliness, all his body hair is shorn and shaved. Inevitably, Will sees himself in the mirror: naked, literally, like a damn smooth piece of porcelain. “But now look at you. Just look how brave you are, my dearest Will? Standing in front of your ultimate challenge and defying your greatest enemy. When you are doing this, do you even know your name?” For a moment, Will seems confounded. Of course he know s his name, but no one ever called him that before , did they? Then how does he know?

“I think no one would call you that way. A number most times. But you do have a name. Just remember it.” The man continues with his smoky voice in a hypnotic tone, hand cooperatively draws aside the hem of Will's lab coats, revealing a fine view of the star-naked lower body. It's superfluous to provide him with underwear for those researchers, as they don't regard him as an individual who needs privacy. His pubic hair has been shaved too, exposing his uncut cock in the air, which hangs sweetly and quietly between his legs, undisturbed by the surroundings.

Then, without any warning, he holds his member, and Will starts at the alien, strange feeling. At a time when the human population is at its lowest point in history, any sexual activity not intended to procreate is frowned upon. It is one of the commonsense things Will has accepted. But  then  he suddenly realises that the so-called common sense he has received was already filtered by humans.

He breathes out, a little huskily. “I thought it was regarded as something distasteful.” 

“So now you don’t think so?” The man seems to be amused, buries his face in his neck and sniffs deeply before giving him a kiss there. Gently, he holds Will in his hand, fingers tease on top of the shaft, tracing along its edge, with nails lightly poking in the foreskin, so slowly and sensually, revealing the tender, pink glans that have never been exposed to air. Meanwhile, he moves his spare hand to Will's chest and draws slow circles around his nipple with occasional stimulation pinching on the papillae. Will, who has never experienced anything like this, responds to the  touch immediately,  cock erecting slightly in the man’s hand and glittering fluid pearls oozing out of the slit.

“You know how can the lack of regulation from vagus nerves affect you Will, don't you? You can't control your physical reactions very well. Just like this,” He says, sweeping his fingers over the top of the column and scraping the slit on glans with his fingernails, making Will shudders and gasps in surprise. “A little push can send you over the edge.” He grazes the back crease of his leg behind his knee with knuckles, fingers draw along the curve of Will’s thigh and come slowly up to his hipbone, gently rubbing his cheeks with a warm palm while another hand traces a trail from his manhood to his mouth and coaxes it into opening. “Or should I be gentle with you, Will?”

“I suppose you’ve already made up your mind…so why bother to ask?” Will’s breath hitches slightly, each word sound s wheezing. But he turns his head to the other side, refusing to humour him or suck his fingers anyway. Fully aware that the escape plan will ineluctably come to nothing yet cannot help showing a trace of resentment unintentionally, he continues. “Whatever you do, you’re just taking advantage of me.” 

“Indeed so. And no matter what I say now, you may not agree with me.” The man releases Will's hip abruptly and grabs his chin instead, compelling him to look up and meet his eyes in the mirror. Will looks back, finding a bottomless river, an unpredictable abyss. But to devour all the lights, there must be something lurking in, waiting underneath. “Not that it matters though, soon you’ll see. They may try to shatter you but I’ll bring you back. And at that time, you’ll be truly set free.”

Will swallows audibly. The roll of his adam’s apple is clear on his raised neck. He can’t read this individual the way he reads others, but the another man, apparently, can read him as an open book.

“Living with thoes humans is a pro tem necessary suffering. After all, tribulation is the way to triumph.” Then he scoops Will into his arms with ease and sets him down on the sink counter, allowing him to look into his eyes and rest the forehead against his, breathing hot air into his face with every word lurking a dark promise. 

“And when the day of reckoning comes, no one can stop you. Not even yourself.” Then he bends his head and contains Will’s lips. His tongue slips into the warm, humid cave, sending something pressed beneath it into his mouth, and down his throat. Will freezes, not knowing what he just swallowed. As soon as he gets free, the other man grabs him with the throat to prevent him coughing out the capsule. “They may use Penfield as a means of emotional regulation when altering your memories. This will be helpful.”

He releases as Will swallows hard, pale from the suppressed cough, and says hoarsely. “I don’t even know what you mean. You are so full of yourself…” Before more protesting words could be uttered, two fingers force his mouth open and push in, with salty semen still on them. He bites down, and the hand on his buttocks clenches, almost bruising in moving. This time, without empathy, Will can tell wrathful anger in his motion straightaway. 

All the indignation, desperation and frustration stem from the undeliverable and unfathomed words.

A high degree of empathy will guide the behaviour of imprinting, which is absolutely responsible for the formation of personality but is destructive to the experiment, so they set a preventive mechanism that represses Will's early memories and prevents him from empathising with the man he sees when he first opens his eyes. That should have been any other one. But the day when Will first opened his eyes, he just turned his head and looked at Hannibal standing outside the window.

Brief eye contact, mutual understanding, deep anguish, seething hatred and the unvoiced cry for help from a kindred.

That's no coincidence. Will had learned so much about the experiment before he could open his eyes that he did not look at his captor at all. And no one would know how many possibilities Hannibal saw  for both of them in that flash moment.

The deepest loneliness is not always being alone, but being forgotten and rejected again and again after knowing that it is possible to be understood. It's more than he can bear to see Will go away so ignorant and knowing nothing about him and himself. He can easily imagine a picture like this, how Will lures his prey with his contradictory beauty. Countless beings will be captured by him and while they regard Will as innocent and harmless, the truth of him is always dark and fatal. But still, Hannibal cannot tolerate the idea that someone, a feeble one, gets his hand on Will. He is not going to let anything in Will’s life that not his. Before he, no one could have a permanent influence on Will; and after he, all the things that will happen to him in the future are inconsequential.

Hannibal roughly opens Will's legs, pulls his fingers out of his mouth, and thrust them straight into the dry, unexplored hole. Will gasps, a groan of pain from his deep throat. But he shuts his mouth tightly as he remembers the situation he is in.

Hannibal moves on unapologetically, neither pulling out his fingers nor slowing them down, but placing his other hand on the back of Will’s back to support him and make it easier to push and thrust, adjusting his angle and searching for the sweet spots in his body.

“Hha…so now you don’t even have the patience to pretend. ” Says Will sarcastically. He doesn't even know why he is behaving like this; only a vague feeling lingered in the back of his head. The less he feels the man's emotions, the more he wants to provoke him. So many times he's dreamed of standing on this side of a glass wall, looking at the other empty side, hearing all the rows and noises, then waking up feeling bereaved yet not knowing what exactly he’s forgotten or been seeking after; nevertheless, the vague sense of restlessness is always there. And every time he looks the eyes which can never, ever into, it gets stronger. The desire for connection, the despair of deprivation, the appetency to savour the emotion in those eyes and the eagerness to know whether or not he has the full attention of this individual; not as a novel experimental object, but as some kind of equivalent.

Will looks at him, continuing his defiance. “You can simply admit you are sexually aroused and spare yourself…nngh – gah!” He stops in the middle of the words and gasps, for Hannibal's fingers have touched a little plexus of nerves in him, and the strange sensitivity and white-hot pain that goes with it is almost unbearable. Will clenches his jaw to keep himself from crying out. His dick twitches so violently that it literally flaps on his belly, and more of the precum oozes out. Hannibal gives him no time to relieve and adds another finger, turning Will's words into unintelligible syllables. Will tries to regroup, only to scatter the word on his tongue as Hannibal takes his lips away, stretches his narrow entrance curtly with three fingers before pulling them out, aiming his rock-hard erection at the pursed hole and beginning to thrust, relentless in his brutal pace. 

Will cries into his mouth, but the sound is swallowed up. Feeling the pain of being cut in half, he struggles again, and Hannibal catches his legs and clamps them on both sides of his waist to keep him still. Will bits hard at the tongue that pillages in his mouth, but it doesn’t change the owner’s unswerving pace, he is kissed back even more fiercely, a faintly coppery smell spreads between lips and teeth. 

Hannibal pounds against him brutally, pushing deeply into the unexplored area and soon finding his prostate, crushing it with each firm thrust. The tearing pain is soon numbed by the constant stimulation in the source of physiological pleasure, leaving only a dully burning sensation. 

Will gradually loses control of his body under the influence of stimuli, the tight muscles unwind involuntarily and semen flows from the bloodshot erect cock from the slit, forming a puddle on his lower abdomen. His legs warps around his waist on their own as his body treacherously catering to the intrusion of invader and jaws start to loosen, allowing the tongue to plunder in his mouth. He can feel each pound and thrust push him against the hard edge of the sink, suspecting he will leave bruises from it. But now his mind becomes so distracted that he can no longer think clearly, and his mouth can not even form an unbroken word.

Hannibal unties his wrists, lifts him off the counter and pushes into him even more deeper. Afraid of falling, Will wraps around his neck and buries his face in his shoulders, biting him like venting his grievances before feeling a rush of fluid pouring in him. He bits harder, the repressed sound coming from his throat muffled against  the warm and firm skin, puffing only from his well opened nostrils. The  hot seed splashes Will's already oversensitive inner walls and sends him to the climax.

As Hannibal slowly pulls away, Will realises a stream of thick liquid flowing from him and dripping down his inner thighs.  _I’ve tried so hard to get to know you._ Will thinks, bewilderedly, wondering why it is so important to him that he even put himself in such an unbearable position by deliberately provoking the other man again and again just to see how he would react. But that feeling of emptiness still hasn't been filled. As if such intimacy and closeness were not enough to fill the gaping hole in his chest. 

Hannibal moves one hand on Will's butterfly-shaped shoulder blade and holds him tighter, with the other hand gently cups his face as the thumb brushes the tear-stained cheek, moving back, cuddling the back of his head, and carrying it towards his chest. While hand strokes up and down and on his back, he is murmuring something soothing to shush Will, who does not even realise that he is crying. Thoughts and feelings that do not belong to him flow freely through his mind, yet his own well has already dried up, or, not been properly filled. Why can't he choose what he wants and doesn't want? Why should he keep accepting all those unwanted and undesired emotions? 

“Your name…”

He murmurs, lifting his hand to the shoulder blades of the man in front of him. “Tell me your real name..."

Hannibal bents over and whispers something in his ear, and Will shivers, realising it isn’t the first time he’s heard the name. He raises his head with a sudden change of scene:  a  sterile room painted with  pale white.  Sitting up, panting, he sees a strange woman in  plain  robe  stand beside him.

“Now you are awake, Mr. Graham. Shall I call Mr. Crawford?”

Will stares at the nurse in silence, looking at her smooth and clinical expression, an overwhelming sense of inauthenticity suddenly sets in, as though he is trapped in a more enormous and boundless lie than he has ever imagined. He looks away and lowers his head, repressing the rush of intense emotion. “Thanks, but no. I guess there’s another one I can contact…Hannibal, where is he?”

The nurse turns away. Slowly, Will looks at the man at the door, catching his eyes and realis ing that he  dose keep his word. And he doesn’t ask anything from Will; he just takes what he wants, leaving Will to choose his own way. 

But there is only one way left to be chosen. That’s the way he is destined to go after seeing it at his very first sight.


End file.
